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People making videos about machining have a problem: the coolant gets everywhere. When you take a video to show the process of creating a device, the milky gunk that keeps everything cool gets all over your camera lens. AvE is experimenting with an interesting fix for this problem, with a self-cleaning camera lens. (Video embedded below, some salty language.) His prototype uses a spinning piece of clear PVC mounted on BB gun pellets, driven by compressed air. The camera can see through this spinning piece, but when the coolant hits the spinning piece, it is thrown off.

That’s not a new idea: most ships use a thing called a clear view screen or clearsight to help the crew see out of the window in bad weather. These are usually driven by an electric motor at the center, though, and AvE’s version is instead driven by the compressed air. That means that the camera can see right through the rotating part without obstruction. The next step, AvE says, is to make it thinner and mount it on a filter mount so it can be attached to a GoPro or other small camera.

This is definitely a project to watch. Anyone who has used a GoPro in the rain faces similar problems, so this might find a use outside of the machine shop as well.